Self-care for caring
people
Caring people are, by definition, “givers”. Aptly
termed “caregivers” when taking care of others as a job, some find themselves
evolving into this role in their everyday relationships. Whether they’re
care-givers professionally (health-care, teachers, administrative support) or
care-givers in a family or with friends, most of their time is focused on
meeting the needs of the people they give to.
Care-givers are typically busy people who fit more
into one day than other people would try to do in a whole week. They just keep
going and going, and somehow they manage to get it all done.
If this sounds like something you can relate to,
this kind of constant stress can be hard on you – physically you may feel
exhausted, emotionally you may feel anxious, and mentally you may feel
scattered.
Over time, care-givers spend so much energy keeping
up with this pace that they have nothing left for themselves, leading to a
serious condition called burnout and feeling depleted.
Common signs of burnout
in care-givers
Physically, you feel exhausted and rundown and
you've been more susceptible to colds and other illness. You may have more aches
and pains and difficulty sleeping. You may be clumsier and more prone to
accidents.
Emotionally, you tend to take a negative viewpoint.
You may feel hopeless about your situation and very alone. It will be much
harder for you to connect with others (including the people you are caring for).
You often seem to be putting your foot in your mouth – you didn't think you said
anything wrong, but you get emotional reactions that you didn't expect,
impairing relationships.
Here is where you see that in your very noble
efforts to be the very best friend, professional, family member you could, you
actually made it more difficult for yourself to do that! You
simply can't give from an empty well.
Unhealthy, even self-destructive, behaviors may be
another symptom of burnout. You may be using food as a means of control or
comfort, or even as a way of punishing yourself because you don't feel like
you're doing a good enough job taking care of others. You may be using other
forms of escapism, like watching more TV, procrastination, drugs or
alcohol.
Why self-care is
important
Whether you're headed towards burnout or already
there, self-care can start to restore your mind, body and soul.
Doing self-caring things for yourself promotes
healthy self-esteem because you are sending the message to yourself that you are
worth taking care of!
Practicing self-care will recharge your battery so
that you have much more to give to others and so that you start feeling better
physically.
Your personal self-care
prescription
For one person, self-care can be the simplest act
of making the bed so it is nice for you when you get in it again at night. For
someone else, it's a bubble bath with a full glow of candles and mood music, or
it's taking a break from work (and care-giving) for a vacation. You may wish to
revisit our March 2009 issue for some ideas for
bringing stillness into your day.
Along with these important forms of physical,
spiritual and emotional self-care, we at the White Picket Fence Counseling
Center also encourage you to practice good nutritional self-care – choosing the
foods and eating behaviors that will nourish you and not harm you.
Whatever self-care means to you, what's most
important is to give yourself the time to make it a part of your
life.
Living a self-caring
life
Self-care includes the people we choose to spend
the most time with. Where possible, we want to surround ourselves with
supportive people and protect our healthy relationships with good communication
skills.
That doesn't mean you always have to agree or stay
silent instead of standing up for yourself. You can practice speaking your truth
with kindness and compassion. When you don’t take the opportunity to express
your perspective, you quietly build animosity. This leads back to
feeling depleted...
When you do notice that a certain relationship in
your life feels "toxic" or harmful to you, it can be helpful to look at what you
might be getting out of it. For example, listening to someone complain all of
the time might be annoying, but it also might make you feel better about your
own problems. Or it may feel nice to seemingly feel needed by them.
Sometimes the best choice may be to walk away from
the relationship, other times you may work on improving it. In either case, look
for some support and an objective opinion from outside of the relationship.
Are you currently
practicing good self-care?
This is a good time for self-examination. Are you
taking care of yourself? We all need to nurture and care for ourselves as we
would a small child or our best friend. If we're hurting ourselves in any way,
we need to find a way to stop, often with the help of others. And we need to
make sure we are doing kind and self-caring things for ourselves every single
day. Consider checking in with your counselor or support group to see if you
are getting enough for yourself before you give so much to others.
We are in the midst of several ongoing groups and will
send out flyers soon for the next sessions:
